Among Us hit with hack promoting Trump and threatening players

InnerSloth is scrambling to deal with a mass hacking campaign that has hit its suddenly viral game Among Us, the company said in a number of tweets. The issue popped up following a highly popular live stream of the game involving US Representatives AOC and Ilhan Omar, marking the latest and most disruptive instance of hacking that targets players.Among Us is a simple game with similarly simple graphics and gameplay; a group of up to 10 players must finish tasks to win. The only problem? Some of those players are alien imposters who are tasked with killing off as many of the players as possible. The game is easy to learn and deceptively simple — and, until just weeks ago, it spent months barely acknowledged.

The game skyrocketed to popularity around the world in a way few games ever have before, leaving the developer team behind Among Us scrambling to change their roadmap, deal with server issues, and more. Hacking has been a consistent problem for players since the game's newly found popularity was established, the latest involving the mass promotion of the hacker's social accounts and Trump.

Hello everyone,
We're are super duper aware of the current hacking issue and we're looking into it. We will be pushing out an emergency server update so people who are in game will get kicked from games. Please play private games or with people that you trust!!! Bare with us!! 😰

— Innersloth 🦥 (@InnerslothDevs) October 23, 2020

News of the hack surfaced on social media, as these things tend to do, with players sharing screenshots of the chat messages on Reddit and Twitter. The hacked chat points users toward a YouTube account and Discord server listed as belonging to an "Eris Loris" alongside threats like "I blow up your phone" and "I hack your device."

The folks over at Kotaku got in touch with the hacker who, it seems, was only interested in spamming people using bots. The hacker says he found the hacking campaign "funny" due, in part, to the "anger and hatred" from players. Likewise, Loris described himself as a Trump supporter, explaining "TRUMP 2020" message some players have seen.

InnerSloth developer Forest Willard tweeted that he was rolling out a server update using a "faster method" than previously used, warning that it would impact more players and that some of them may get kicked from games. Willard advised players to think of this update as emergency maintenance, also stating:

Also worth nothing that the reason I didn't roll this update out sooner is that I was afraid of false positives:

You totally might see the game think you're hacking when you're not. I've done my best to find this kind of bug, but my hand is forced this time.

— Forest (@forte_bass) October 23, 2020